Every year around this time, negotiators from across the globe meet in
one city or another—Montreal, Marrakech, Copenhagen, Paris—to resolve
that the world really ought come up with a plan to do something about
climate change. This year’s Conference of the Parties, the twenty-third
such gathering, is taking place in Bonn, and in addition to the usual
impediments to progress—mistrust, inequality, bad faith—there’s now the
Trump Administration to contend with. On Monday, the U.S. delegation
used its sole official appearance at COP23 to tout fossil fuels.

“Promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a
cancer summit,” the former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was in
Bonn for the COP, observed.
Protesters at the event sang songs and then walked out, leaving the hall half
empty.

Also on Monday, a group of scientists reported that global carbon
emissions, which had been flat for the past few years, were once again
on the rise. The group predicted that industrial CO2 emissions in 2017
would total thirty-seven billion tons, which is about two per cent more
than in 2016, and that this figure would likely climb again in 2018.
“World backsliding on curbing
carbon emissions,” summed up a
headline in the Bangor Daily News.

Then, on Tuesday, the International Energy Agency, which is based in
Paris, released its annual “World Energy Outlook.” One of the agency’s
key findings is that global energy demand will continue to rise through
2040. Another is that, owing to technological advances like fracking,
the United States is poised to become a major exporter of fossil fuels.
“By the mid-2020s, the United States [will] become the world’s largest
liquefied natural gas exporter and a few years later a net exporter of
oil,” the agency
predicts.
It’s hard to say which of these announcements was the most depressing,
but, on some level, it doesn’t really matter, since they’re all
connected.

One way to interpret what the Trump Administration is up to with its
absurd denials of climate science is as a play for time. Someday, the
world will have to get serious about climate change, and at that point
fossil-fuel use will have to decline dramatically. Whatever the
Administration can do to put off that day will benefit American
producers of fossil fuels. In a world where energy demand is continuing
to rise, many tens of billions of dollars stand to be made.

However incompetent the Administration may be in other realms, it has
proven itself remarkably adept in this one. As David Roberts put it, in
Vox,
“Trump has been erratic and unpredictable in many ways, but when it
comes to fossil fuels, there is no wavering.” Consider, for example, the
Paris Agreement. The accord, forged with the help of President Barack
Obama at COP21, is not, by itself, going to halt the rise in emissions.
But, if countries abide by its provisions, investment in fossil fuels
will, sooner rather than later, have to start to drop. The Trump
Administration has tried to insure that this doesn’t happen by
announcing its intention to withdraw from the accord. Last week, Syria
announced that it would sign the agreement, leaving the United States
the only country in the world to decline to participate. (“We have even
been surpassed by a country embattled by civil war,” Slate noted.)

Here at home, the Administration has promoted fossil fuels so
aggressively that, at times, its efforts have bordered on self-parody. A
comprehensive list of its fossil-fuel-boosting activities would fill
several Web posts; here are just a few highlights:

In April, the
President signed an executive
order aimed at expanding offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
The order also directs the Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, to review
the country’s marine sanctuaries, with an eye toward opening them to
energy exploration.

In July, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
announced that his department will hold more frequent lease sales on public lands,
and cut the time required to obtain a drilling permit.

In August, the Department of Energy issued a
report calling for changes in the way that energy markets are regulated, which
would funnel money to the coal industry.

Next month, the President is expected to announce that he is cutting the
size of Bears Ears National Monument, in southeastern Utah, by almost a
million acres, or roughly ninety per cent. The land removed from
protection could then be leased for drilling. “The ship of state is
about to be turned into the Exxon Valdez,” Dan Becker, the director of
the Safe Climate Campaign,
told the Washington Post.

What’s key about all these moves is that they will lead to more
investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure. Once a new offshore oil
platform or natural-gas well is completed, it’s likely to live out its
useful life. (Call it establishing facts in the ground.) At events like
COP23, this is known as “lock in”; the more fossil-fuel infrastructure
that gets built, the more carbon emissions get “locked in.” Whatever
happens (or doesn’t) this week in Bonn, the Trump Administration and its
cronies in the fossil-fuel industry—the two groups are, admittedly,
often interchangeable—are making it that much harder to curtail
emissions. The future that’s being “locked in” looks increasingly grim.